Sabai,
Going by your previous postings in the thread, I would surmise that your system is pretty high end and resolving. That said, you may also like to know other aspects of my personal experience with the qol :-
1) The S/N ratio is indeed rather low as previously posted; I can hear more hiss and noise from my speakers in between tracks and during soft passages. With the qol out of the chain, the added noise was gone
2} When I cranked up the volume with the qol in place, there is a point where distortion can be easily heard and things start to sound ragged
3) Image size is quite stretched to the point of unbelievability. A glaring example is when the tenor sax is playing, it is as if I am standing at the "cusp of the crucible" so to speak, staring down into the deep belly of the sax - totally unreal
4) The bypass mode is not a true absolute bypass. Remove the qol from the chain altogether and the comparison is startling - one gets easily seduced by the immediate signal gain and think, ah, instruments have more body but take it out of the chain, and gradually crank up your system. You will realise a similar gain in instrument body but without the image stretching effect
From the patents posted previously, it would seem that the qol is an analog equaliser preamp with some gain that manipulates the left and right signals in an out-of-phase sort of way that expands the soundstage and instrument images in a very significant way. And this, to my ears and in my system, is to an unbearable degree.
But to be fair to everyone, you pay for whatever floats your boat. If you like the sound, enjoy. If not, return it. And there will be peace all round in this most peaceful of hobbies.
Going by your previous postings in the thread, I would surmise that your system is pretty high end and resolving. That said, you may also like to know other aspects of my personal experience with the qol :-
1) The S/N ratio is indeed rather low as previously posted; I can hear more hiss and noise from my speakers in between tracks and during soft passages. With the qol out of the chain, the added noise was gone
2} When I cranked up the volume with the qol in place, there is a point where distortion can be easily heard and things start to sound ragged
3) Image size is quite stretched to the point of unbelievability. A glaring example is when the tenor sax is playing, it is as if I am standing at the "cusp of the crucible" so to speak, staring down into the deep belly of the sax - totally unreal
4) The bypass mode is not a true absolute bypass. Remove the qol from the chain altogether and the comparison is startling - one gets easily seduced by the immediate signal gain and think, ah, instruments have more body but take it out of the chain, and gradually crank up your system. You will realise a similar gain in instrument body but without the image stretching effect
From the patents posted previously, it would seem that the qol is an analog equaliser preamp with some gain that manipulates the left and right signals in an out-of-phase sort of way that expands the soundstage and instrument images in a very significant way. And this, to my ears and in my system, is to an unbearable degree.
But to be fair to everyone, you pay for whatever floats your boat. If you like the sound, enjoy. If not, return it. And there will be peace all round in this most peaceful of hobbies.